Explicit music videos are revolting parents and politicians alike. But as Lily Allen shows, there's a different way to revolt.

Most pop music videos are about projecting impossible levels of glamour and gloss. So when an artist puts out a video that begins with her receiving liposuction on an operating table while being told that she has really let herself go, you know she's going to have something subversive to say.

And this is exactly how Lily Allen marked her return to music yesterday afternoon after a four-year hiatus: four minutes and 23 seconds of social comment delivered in her characteristic sing-song vocals. "Um… I had two babies," the 28-year-old says at the start of the video to "Hard Out Here", while a suited male executive – her manager, perhaps, or a record company minder – looms over her, instructing the surgeon to "take some more out".

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